The School Committee and Finance Subcommittee will meet in special sessions on Monday, May 14, to review, and approve, the district 2013 fiscal year budget.
Cindy Sullivan, chairwoman of the Finance Subcommittee said that group met on April 30 to review the budget, as initially proposed, with school district administration, program directors and principal, but took no action because of the lack of firm budget numbers from the city and state.
“Without fast numbers we did not approve anything,” she said.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, who serves as the School Committee chairman by virtue of his elected office, said that he would provide the city’s budget numbers to the committee members this week to allow them time to study and digest the budget.
The committee will have to vote Monday to comply with Knapik’s timeline of submitting the entire municipal budget to the City Council at its May 17 session. The School Department budget comprises about half of the entire municipal spending package.
“You will have the numbers for next Monday by Wednesday (May 9) because the budget is going to the council on May 17,” Knapik said.
Knapik said that he will generate a budget using the state House of Representatives budget proposal, to determine an estimate of the city’s level of state aid to the city through unrestricted aid, Chapter 90 funding for roads and Chapter 70 funding for schools. The final state budget, with actual local aid numbers, will be determined through a House and Senate compromise effort.
The preliminary 2013 budget package of $56,790,456, as presented by School Superintendent Suzanne Scallion, contains a proposed increase of $4,600,445 over the current fiscal year budget. That budget draft was presented to the School Committee on April 23 as a means of beginning its budget review process.
Scallion said the April 23 proposed budget is a “level funded” proposal, and addresses increases for salaries, utilities, transportation, professional development, unemployment insurance, legal services and special education.
Nearly half of the $4.5 million budget gap is due to the end of federal programs that provided nearly $2.5 million of funds used to bridge the budget gaps of recent years.
The federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and jobs programs, which pumped $1,979,664 into the district budget, have terminated, meaning that the city has to either find a means of covering that funding or reducing staff positions funded through the federal programs.
The district can use $1.7 million in income to offset part of that $4.6 million increase, Scallion said. The offsets include $1 million from the district’s school choice income, and using any surplus in the present budget, projected at $500,000, to prepay special education out of district tuition for next year. The early childhood program at the Fort Meadow School is also projected to bring $190,000 into the district.
The School Committee voted Monday night to authorize the Chief Financial Officer John Kane to identify uncommitted funding in the current budget that can be used to prepay special education out-of-district tuition costs. State law allows districts to prepay up to three months for special education for the next fiscal year, which begin July 1, 2012.
